Following last month’s putting instruction featuring
Dr Paul Hurrion’s work with Rory McIlroy, we focus on
how the same coach’s Quintic Ball Roll putting analysis system
is now guiding regular golfers – as well as tour stars – to the
correct specifications and stroke. Dominic Pedler reports on
the ultimate launch monitor for your putting.

“Putting is an art not a science,”

claims Ben Crenshaw, which is all very well when
you’re blessed with the perfect stroke of that
particular two-time Masters champion. But for
the rest of us – and that includes tour pros such
as Padraig Harrington and Rory McIlroy – science
is very much transforming our understanding
of the mechanics of putting and the way both
our stroke and our equipment influence the vital
dynamics of the golf ball on its final journey.

In the same way that conventional launch
monitors such as TrackMan, Vector, FlightScope
and Foresight GC2 have revolutionised the long
game, so the equivalent technology for the more
modest – but most used – club in the bag is now
emerging as an essential part of the clubfitting
process for golfers of all levels.

One session on the latest Quintic v2.4 system
will dramatically alter the way you think about the
very nature of putting: opening your eyes not
only to obvious alignment issues but, more fundamentally,
to the nuances of ball speed, spin,
launch angle and the nature of true roll.
Quintic does all this through a state-of-the-art
camera which (operating at 260 frames-per-second)
only needs to capture the movement of a
specially marked golf ball over the first 12 inches
of its journey for the software to impute all the
clubfitter needs to know about your clubface
contact and the resulting influence on the ball in
terms of the roll and path of putt.

While some of the parameters Hurrion himself
summarises below can get rather techie in nature,
it’s worth stressing that Quintic is emerging
as a highly practical tool, in practice, both for
coaches as a teaching aid and for clubfitters who
can now match a player’s putter specification to
their style of stroke far more swiftly and efficiently
than ever before.

Previously privy only to Hurrion’s roster of tour
pros (which, along with McIlroy and Harrington,
includes Lee Westwood and Robert-Jan Derksen),
the Quintic software is now available to all
through the network of Gel Golf Fitting Centres
around the country. You don’t have to use a Gel
putter to be assessed by a Hurrion-trained expert
– though you may nevertheless want to one
a try (see below on Grooves).

It’s worth mentioning that Hurrion came into
the business of equipment ‘micro analysis’ following
his time as personal biomechanist to
British javelin legend, Steve Backley, over the
course of two Olympics.

“As well as measuring all the speeds, angles
and trajectories of the javelin itself we would
analyse all the body movements, such as shoulder
separation, etc, using everything from force
platforms to 3D simulation,” he recounts. “Back in those analog days, the number crunching
could take as long as 24 hours to get the data
for each training session. Now with the latest
digital putting technology, the numbers and the
feedback to the player are instant.”

Following Gi’s visit to The Belfry to see the
system in action, here is Hurrion’s instant guide
to the putting parameters that the Quintic v2.4
measures (illustrated by some accompanying
screen grabs) and why they matter so much to
your own putting game.

PAUL HURRION’S GUIDE TO THE
QUINTIC V2.4 PUTTING DATA

Unlike the long game, where hooks and slices
and their causes are far easier to spot, many
putting flaws are invisible even to the trained
eye. So the Quintic process starts with helping
the golfer to understand the result of any putt –
why they missed the hole, whether through
alignment or from a particular ball dynamic at
impact. Have they pulled it? Have they hit it
slightly out of the toe generating some hookspin?
Was it mis-alignment at address? Or have
they hit a good putt but just mis-read it?

Unless you know what it is, you can’t work on
your game in any meaningful way. It only takes
half a dozen putts for Quintic to paint a highly revealing
picture of a player’s putting profile. Here
are the main things we look for:-

1) Ball speed

Obviously the pace of any putt is crucial, but developing
a consistency of ball speed for any
given length of putt is an often overlooked factor.
If you’ve got more than 1 mph variation in pace
for the six putts of 20 feet in our typical test,
you’re going to be struggling. You might hit most
of them at 5 mph – but even a 1 mph variation
will makes a difference of some 4 or 5 feet.
The software also includes a special graph of
ball speed over time, where we’re looking for a
fairly straight line reflecting a uniform deceleration
to confirm the golf ball is hugging the
ground throughout the putt. A wavy line shows
there are moments when the ball is in the air and
the putt is therefore slowing at different rates.

This information really helps the golfer to understand
the importance of pace and feel, and
the clubfitter to identify what loft the player
needs on their putter to get a smooth roll.

2) Side spin

Just like any other club in the bag, the ball can
come off the putter face with hook-spin or cutspin.
Anything below +or- 10 rpm doesn’t have
an effect on where the ball ends up. 10-20 rpm
is usually OK, but anything above that and you
can see how the ball bounces and deviates from
the intended path.

The task is then to see what is causing that
sidespin: whether it’s swing path, face alignment,
or perhaps a faulty set-up or lie angle that
makes the toe sit above the ground affecting the
weight distribution at impact.
It’s all very well saying that if a particular spin
is consistent it doesn’t matter. But if you’ve got a
cut-spin stroke then you’ll have to read a putt
with a left-to-right break differently to one with a
right-to-left break. Do you want that variability in
your game?

3) Initial ball roll

For initial ball roll we want a positive figure to
confirm that the ball is rolling forwards, and not
starting its journey with backspin which many
players generate for various reasons – most notably
launch angle, as we discuss below.

This notion of ‘topspin’ is an area that has
preoccupied putter designers in recent years, as
shown especially by the rise of groove-faced
putter designs.
But too much topspin – anything more than
100 rpm – is detrimental. Rather like an extreme
topspin forehand in tennis, the golf ball
can also jump up extra high on that first
bounce. The effect will be most apparent when
the green is sloping: the ball will react by stopping
more quickly into a upward slope, or
pitching exaggeratedly and running off wildly
on a downward slope.

4) True roll

Ideally your putt should display true forward roll
as early as possible after impact, making the ball
much less prone to straying from its path as it
will be less susceptible to imperfections in the
green, spike-marks and debris.

True roll is measured here as the distance it
takes for the golf ball to make a full 360-degree rotation
after impact. In theory, this could be as a little
as just over 5.25 inches – the circumference of
a standard 1.68 diameter ball. But, in practice, the
ball will inevitably skid off the face for a while, remaining
on its axis before starting to roll forward.

There’s naturally more skid the longer the putt
and the harder you hit it. But, as a general rule, a
putt should achieve that first full rotation within
10 per cent of the total target distance [eg. within
18 inches on a 15ft putt]. If not, there is something
you and the clubfitter can improve on –
typically loft, as we discuss below.

5) Launch angle

Another vital area often overlooked is the angle at
which the ball leaves the putter face. Again, this varies according to the length and speed of putt
but, for 5 mph of ball speed on a typical 15-foot
putt, we’ve found the ideal launch to be around 1
degree. Anywhere between 0.7 and 1.5 degrees
is good. But anything more than 2 degrees and
the ball literally takes off, making it bounce higher
(and more often) and be subject to deflection
from its intended path every time it lands.

In the accompanying screen grab, the golf
ball has started with as much as 4.03 degrees
of launch angle, which also has the effect of imparting
45 rpm of unwanted backspin. The ball
has to travel over eight inches before it is back
to merely the same axis as when it left the putter
face – it hasn’t yet rolled forward at all.

We often see this with players who generate
too much dynamic loft at impact, those who
break the wrists just before impact, and those
who have the ball too far forward in their stance.
Too little launch, however, and the ball is
driven directly into the ground from where it will
again bounce more in the early stages rather
than riding smoothly over the grass.

The ball can also be hit with negative loft –
caused by the opposite of the factors just mentioned
– striking it directly down into the grass
before, again, bouncing up and compromising
true roll and topspin.

Using the data for putter fitting – a quick
summary

Understanding and quantifying the above parameters
helps hugely both in helping a player
to improve their technique and in correctly
choosing a putter and fitting the specifications
to their stroke.

Take loft, for example. Most putters come
with 3 or 4 degrees of static loft, so to achieve
the desired launch of around 1 degree, the
player will need to de-loft the face by some 2
degrees dynamically.

Whether you can do this depends hugely on
your style of stroke. For example, Phil Mickelson
has a pronounced ‘forward press’ where his
hand action de-lofts the clubface by some 5 degrees.
To achieve the ideal 1-degree launch he
therefore needs to start with a static loft on his
putter of at least 6 degrees.

At the other extreme, Zach Johnson – who has his hands well behind the ball both at address
and impact – needs just the opposite. He
actually needs negative static loft to achieve a
positive 1-degree launch.

[Note: you don’t need to change your putter
to change the static loft. On his recent visit to
Quintic, Dominic had his putter de-lofted in seconds
on the loft & lie machine by Paul Hurrion,
yielding an immediate improvement in his
launch angle.]

Similarly, the data helps us determine the
best specs for shaft length and lie angle as well
as the important decisions as regards blade vs.
mallet, centre shaft vs. heel shaft and face balanced
vs. toe heavy.

The latter is particularly important as subtle
head weighting nuances can have a dramatic
influence on your putting according to your style
of stroke [see Padraig Harrington below].

Even the thickness of the shaft and distribution
of the weight throughout the length of the
club can have an important effect, and the club
fitter may well recommend this, for example to
encourage a more pendulum action.

Ultimately, the Quintic system is all about fitting
the putter to the player’s posture and
stroke – rather than the other way around.

Profile of the perfect putt

For many of us it will prove quite a challenge to strike a putt
with just the right launch conditions to promote the perfect roll,
as measured by the Quintic software.

Here’s an example of the results from one European Tour professional from which Hurrion
makes the following key observations:-

• Below 10 rpm of sidespin is excellent. +6 rpm is actually negligible and will have no effect on
the ball’s path.

• The ball started its forward rotation immediately after impact, wasting no time through skidding.

• Initial ball speed is 5.08 mph which results in the golf ball travelling approximately 19 feet
on a flat green with a Stimpmeter reading of 12.

• The point of ‘True Roll’ occurs after 19 inches – which is even better than our guideline of 10%
of the travel distance.

• The Launch Angle of 1.29 degrees is excellent and the result was a smooth forward roll for the
first 12 inches of the putt.

• The golf ball has rotated 227 degrees after the first 12 inches of its path, with 510 rpm of
forward rotation at this point. The increased rpm values is something we are trying to achieve,
thus ensuring the ball is rolling out smoothly and using up energy sooner.

Padraig’s
Putting Panacea

Paul Hurrion has worked for some seven
years with Padraig Harrington as his
putting adviser and biomechanics analyst.
In fact the three-time major champion is so
impressed with the Quintic system that he
has his own unit installed in his home.

Hurrion on his latest work with the Irishman...
“We’ve been working, in particular, on the 15-20ft
range. After all, the stats tell us that Padraig led
the tour last season in three-putt avoidance,
while his holing-out from short range is phenomenal.
Of the 1,000, or so, putts within four feet he
had in 2010, he only missed one in the whole
season!

The most important recent change has been
some subtle changes to the specifications of
Padraig’s Odyssey 2-Ball putter. His typical
straight putt generates about 25 degrees of
hook-spin – slightly above the ideal range –
which was causing some trouble, particularly on
right-to-left breaking putts.

He’s therefore moved to a more face-balanced
designed chosen from a range of prototypes with
slightly longer hosels that Odyssey made specifically
for him. Moving to what is effectively a
slightly lighter toe has helped him reduce the tendency
for the face to close, which in turn is successfully
moderating the natural hook-spin of his
stroke and thus reduces the hook spin to minimal
values.”

This idea of a lighter toe reducing hook spin is
interesting – as it would appear to be the opposite
of the weighting advice on adjustable weight
drivers. We asked Hurrion about this.
“It is largely dependent on the style of stroke,”
he explains. “We have had players for whom
hook-spin has decreased by increasing the toe
hang. It is all about matching the release of the
putter (headweight and toe hang) with the natural
hand release of the golfer through impact. Some
players block at impact, others like to release the
right hand, etc. With the help of the data, the
skilled fitter can fit for a golfer’s individual style.”

Into the groove

The science behind the modern grooved-face putters

From a design as well as a performance
point of view, the
Quintic camera and software
system is ideal for comparing
different types of putter faces,
including the effect of groove
configurations in improving the
golf ball’s impact and roll characteristics.
[So much so that
Quintic is currently adopted by
the R&D departments of top
putter companies such as Ping,
Taylor Made/Rossa, Srixon and
Adams Golf.]

Hurrion himself developed his
own interest in putter grooves
following a research paper, a few
years ago, into the distinctive CGroove
faces found on Yes!Golf
putters. This confirmed that
grooves can make a significant
improvement in terms of reducing
skidding and generating forward
roll sooner than otherwise,
and led him to develop his own
range of groove-faced putters
for Gel Golf.

“Grooves give you less surface
area when striking the golf
ball, allowing the edge of the
groove to make a distinctive
contact with the soft cover of
the ball. A well constructed
groove will actually ‘grab’ the
ball momentarily at impact, creating
a higher frictional force
which, in turn, promotes a
more efficient contact
and roll.

And, just like on irons
and woods,
grooves on putters
help
markedly
when there is any water on the face, which
the grooves help to disperse.
On a plain-faced putter you get
far more variability in results
depending on the amount of
moisture on the face.

But much depends on the
type of groove configuration, in
particular the angle at which
the grooves are set. Inferior
grooves combined with an inferior
stroke and an off-centre
strike can actually increase the
sidespin (which you don’t want)
rather than just the topspin
(which you do).

The type of golf ball you play
is also a factor, with different
levels of cover softness and
dimple configuration affecting
the contact and the amount of
friction. Though this whole area
warrants further research.”

Reproduced with kind permission of Golf International Magazine

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